


Aliens Exist

by Jane St Clair (3jane)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-05
Updated: 2011-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 06:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3jane/pseuds/Jane%20St%20Clair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things keep running around them in the dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aliens Exist

**Author's Note:**

> For st_aurafina, who made me the most beautiful Jack/Ianto icon.

Jack likes to kiss him goodnight.

 

Because, really, Jack is all about performance. He's perfectly capable of blending in, but something in him rebels against it. He dresses in military vintage and swirls into rooms and sparks every time a camera's turned on him.

 

So of course, when they all go to the pub, after hours, it's all Jack, all the time.

 

He doesn't even get drunk, exactly. He just sparks brighter, gestures more broadly. In the street outside the pub, all of them staggering just a little, Jack whirls around to Ianto, who's been laughing at him (inside, always silently, because it's not as though he wants Jack to *stop*), steps in so close Ianto can feel Jack's lungs expand while his own deflate. Breath on his face from a quarter inch away.

 

At the edge of Ianto's vision, something flickers and bolts down the alley. Something purple-white with too many arms.

 

So it's all of them, going after it, on unsteady, drunken legs with only Jack carrying a weapon, over wall and down lane and very briefly beneath a car. Until the purple-white what collapses into a shivering heap, and Jack throws his coat over it. Wraps the thing up like a skin-soaked woman and walks it back to the car and holds it while Ianto drives it back to the Hub and Gwen very quietly holds Jack's gun trained on the back passenger's seat.

 

In the cell, the thing curls up like a beaten child and pulls Jack's coat more tightly around itself. It will not give the coat back. The air around them smells like sharp, barely-ripe tomatoes still on vines.

 

Candied ginger.

 

And, eventually, the others go home. Jack wanders the Hub, waiting for the quiet to set in.

 

Darjeeling in mugs, with milk in. That lingering tomato-vine undercurrent.

 

Ianto slides in behind Jack. Up close, he smells as though he's been rolling in a night garden. Bright herbs just under his skin. Small alien tears keep shifting through his shirt.

 

Jack arches when Ianto kisses his neck. Hisses a little.

 

He doesn't turn around. Just relaxes into the touch, leans back so that Ianto has to take Jack's weight against his shoulder. Both arms around the man's chest, feeling his heartbeat and the faint something-else echo that Jack always leaves in a touch. Pressed together from shoulder to knee.

 

Jack smells so good. Ianto wants to take him outdoors and chew on him gently, all night.

 

 

[9 December 2006]


End file.
